The EU’s new crypto tax rules will require platforms to report user data and transactions, reshaping tax transparency for digital assets starting in 2026.
As market participants focus on short-term price movements, Bitcoin is approaching a notable on-chain milestone, with the number of wallets holding at least 100 BTC climbing toward record levels. This growing concentration of high-value holdings reflects increasing accumulation by large investors, and is viewed as a sign of strong long-term confidence in the world’s leading cryptocurrency. How Large Holders Influence Bitcoin’s Market Cycles Bitcoin is approaching a major milestone, with the number of wallet addresses holding at least 100 BTC set to surpass 20,000. An on-chain analytics firm, Santiment, highlighted on X that at current market valuations, a wallet holding 100 BTC or more is valued at roughly $6.78 million, indicating these addresses are largely controlled by high-net-worth individuals, funds, long-term holders, and institutional participants. Related Reading: Bitcoin Holders Underwater As Supply In Loss Spikes, Reaching Historic Extremes When the number of 100+ BTC wallets increases during or shortly after price declines, as it has been recently, it can be considered a bullish signal. While the number of whale wallets is rising, the overall percentage of BTC supply held by key stakeholders has not meaningfully increased. This helps explain why prices have remained suppressed. However, the growth in 100+ BTC wallets indicates broader distribution among large holders rather than a small group controlling the consolidation. In that sense, it points to less extreme consolidation at the very top. At the same time, it also shows that wealth is clearly migrating from smaller retail wallets into stronger hands. This does not signal decentralization at the smallest ownership level, but it does show that more separate entities are reaching the whale status. Historically, expanding whale wallet counts have often appeared during accumulation phases that later support the price recoveries. For a stronger structural shift to occur, the increase in wallet numbers would need to be matched by a rise in the overall supply they control. That dynamic typically unfolds as retail participants slowly sell off their coins to larger wallets. Meanwhile, history has shown that if retail traders eventually panic-sell or take profit too early, it might lead to the absorption stage. Is This A True Rebound Or A Dead Bounce? Bitcoin adoption is picking up pace across the sector. According to ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, Bitcoin Spot Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) just recorded their strongest day, pulling in roughly $500 million in a single day, reaching $750 million over the past two days combined at the time the report was published. Related Reading: Engine Stalled: How The $8 Billion ‘October Shock’ Left Bitcoin’s Spot Market In A Liquidity Trap Balchunas views the inflows as “a hitter in a slump going yard,” suggesting the market had been in urgent need of a catalyst after a prolonged period of weak performance. The strong back-to-back inflows have helped ease pressure on the sector, pushing year-to-date ETF outflows to under $2 billion. Despite the sharp turnaround, uncertainty remains about whether the inflow spike represents the beginning of a sustained recovery or merely a temporary bounce. Featured image from Pngtree, chart from Tradingview.com
The UK lender is reportedly seeking a technology partner to support blockchain-based payments and deposits as stablecoin adoption accelerates across finance and Big Tech.
The DOJ's crackdown on crypto scams highlights the growing need for international cooperation to combat sophisticated global cybercrime networks.
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Barclays has previously invested in stablecoin settlement infrastructure and consortium efforts, signaling an infrastructure-first approach rather than direct token issuance.
Pi Network is reinforcing its utility-first vision with a new framework designed to ensure ecosystem tokens are tied to real applications, not speculation. On February 27, co-founder Chengdiao Fan introduced the PiRC1 proposal in a detailed video shared through official Core Team channels. The timing is notable. The update comes just after the first anniversary …
Several analysts forecast Bitcoin extending its bear market into late 2026, with potential cycle lows between $30,000 and $45,000 backed by rising exchange reserves.
The Gambling Commission said there is increasing searches and consumer demand for crypto payments in the United Kingdom, which sometimes leads them to illegal websites.
Bitcoin has rebounded from an early-February slide that briefly pushed it to $60,000 and produced its most oversold signal on record, easing some of the pressure that has weighed on crypto markets. According to CryptoSlate's data, the flagship digital asset has steadied in recent days and briefly approached the $70,000 mark before settling around $67,300 […]
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Bitcoin struggled to breach $70,000 this month, while inflation rates decreased in Japan and some countries reevaluated crypto tax codes.
OpenAI just secured $110 billion in fresh investment, and announced additional collaborations with two of the big backers.
Barclays' blockchain exploration signals a shift towards digital asset integration, potentially transforming global banking and payment systems.
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U.S. officials said they froze and seized roughly $580 million in cryptocurrency linked to Chinese scam networks targeting Americans.
Fidelity Digital Assets argues Bitcoin’s market structure has shifted enough that the familiar four-year boom-bust pattern and the brutal 80% drawdowns that often followed, may no longer be the default outcome. In a Feb. 24 research note titled “Is Bitcoin’s Four-Year Cycle Over?” research analyst Zack Wainwright frames the call around a simple observation: Bitcoin is now a very different-sized asset with a very different buyer base. Fidelity pegs Bitcoin’s market cap at an all-time high of roughly $2.5 trillion as of October 2025, alongside signs of deeper liquidity and a steadier volatility regime than prior cycles. “As bitcoin matures, price behavior is diverging from previous cycles. Volatility decreasing even as price reached new highs above $126,000.” Bitcoin Demand Is Being Re-Shaped Fidelity’s volatility argument leans on one-year realized volatility and how it behaved around cycle peaks. In prior cycles, the pattern was broadly consistent: volatility would compress into new lows ahead of a major upside move toward new highs, then expand as the cycle overheated. Related Reading: Bitcoin Yet To See Meaningful Capital Return, Glassnode Says This time, Fidelity says the compression is arriving sooner after the peak. The note points to 17 new all-time lows in one-year realized volatility logged in January 2026—just months after Bitcoin notched fresh all-time highs in October 2025—calling it a meaningful divergence from the cadence of earlier cycles. The team attributes part of that dampening to scale: Bitcoin is about twice the market cap it was at the 2021 peak, roughly 10x 2017’s peak, and over 200x 2013’s. The second pillar is who is holding supply, and how sticky that demand appears. Fidelity highlights a cohort of 49 public companies holding more than 1,000 BTC each, with combined holdings above 1 million BTC, over 5% of circulating supply. It also notes that, since Q1 2020, this group increased holdings quarter-over-quarter in every quarter except Q2 2022, when Tesla sold a large portion of its position. On the ETF side, Fidelity writes that US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024 and collectively held nearly 1.3 million BTC as of Jan. 30, 2026, about 6.4% of circulating supply. The note adds that the category leader surpassed $75 billion in assets under management in under two years, contrasting that pace with gold’s flagship ETF, GLD, which took nearly seven years to reach the same milestone. Together, Fidelity says public companies and ETFs now hold nearly 12% of circulating supply, with most of the growth coming after 2023—a demand shift the team views as structurally important for drawdowns. Related Reading: Bitcoin Spot Volumes Sink To 2024 Lows As Coinbase Selling Pressure Eases Fidelity also argues the cycle has looked “notably stable” across several on-chain and issuance-linked measures. Using a profit-window framework, when addresses in profit first exceed 95% through the last time they remain above 95%, the note says MVRV has stayed roughly around two times realized value through most of the bull market, rather than spiking toward four-to-six times as in earlier cycles. The report flags a counterfactual to illustrate the point: if market cap reached four times realized cap in this cycle, it would imply roughly a $4.5 trillion market cap and about $225,000 per BTC as of Feb. 2, 2026. It also notes the Puell Multiple has stayed close to one, signaling daily issuance value hasn’t meaningfully deviated from its one-year average. Fidelity’s new “Profit to Volatility Ratio” is where the drawdown claim becomes explicit. The team sets 0.01 as a stability line and says the ratio has stayed above 0.015 since late 2023, the longest sustained period at those levels in Bitcoin’s history. Even with a February 2026 downturn that pushed BTC below $70,000, the ratio remained above the threshold. “A measurement above 0.01 can be considered very stable. Conversely, a measurement below 0.01 should be viewed with caution.” The implication, Fidelity suggests, is not that volatility disappears—but that the classic cycle-ending wipeouts may be less likely in a market increasingly shaped by institutional channels and a larger, more liquid base. If that regime holds, the next phase could look less like a blow-off top and more like a slower, more methodical repricing, higher over time, but with fewer cliff-edge resets. At press time, BTC traded at $66,677. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
Ethereum (ETH), down 3.7% from Thursday, joined Solana (SOL) as an underperformer.
The incident adds to a string of crypto custody failures involving South Korean authorities in recent months.
Hotter US PPI inflation data boosted precious metals but punished Bitcoin bulls, with BTC price downside nearing 3% on the day.
South Korea’s National Tax Service reportedly published a wallet seed phrase in a press release, with tokens worth $4.8 million swiftly drained in the latest custody blunder for authorities.
The Chainlink price is hovering in that uncomfortable zone traders know all too well, compressed, quiet, and coiled. At $8.79 on the LINK/USD perpetual market, it doesn’t look heroic. But peel back the layers, and the setup feels anything but sleepy. Chainlink isn’t some fringe token chasing hype. It’s a crypto oracle platform connecting blockchains …
PYUSDx lets developers issue app-specific stablecoins backed by PayPal USD with fast launch, cross-chain support and branded token options.
Billionaire investor Grant Cardone says his company, Cardone Capital, is preparing to tokenise about $5 billion in U.S. real estate assets, aiming to turn property equity into digital tokens that can improve liquidity and act as collateral in secondary markets. The firm is exploring Layer 2 blockchain partners to support high‑volume token issuance and lower transaction costs …
OpenAI's massive funding round signals a transformative shift in AI's role across industries, potentially reshaping global tech dynamics.
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Norway's fund success highlights the growing influence of tech and AI investments, potentially reshaping global investment strategies.
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DeFi leads at Ondo and Galaxy Digital discuss how AI agents will reshape DeFi trading and why this bear is bullish.
Bitcoin’s rally is riding record $1.279 trillion margin debt, and the unwind could arrive without warning Bitcoin’s next phase is being shaped by a record build in U.S. market leverage, recession-leaning survey data and an expanding Treasury buyback program that is aimed at bond-market plumbing rather than monetary easing. Those inputs show up across FINRA’s […]
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ZKsync has announced that ZKsync Lite will be retired on May 4, 2026, with block production stopping and the network’s final state permanently frozen to ensure balances cannot change. Launched as a payment-focused ZK-rollup, ZKsync Lite helped demonstrate the potential of zero-knowledge technology, but the project is now concentrating on newer chains and the broader …
Any rollout would still require strict affordability and suitability checks, and crypto activity would need FCA authorization, Gambling Commission executive Tim Miller said.
South Korea’s National Tax Service accidentally exposed the recovery seed phrase of a seized crypto wallet in a public press release photo, leading attackers to drain about $4.8 million worth of PRTG tokens shortly afterward. The leaked seed phrase gave full control of the wallet, allowing transfers to unknown addresses within hours. Experts say the …
Solana's unique advantages position it as a leading contender against Ethereum in the blockchain space.
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Derive said options positioning and easing downside skew show traders cautiously preparing for a potential bitcoin recovery.